Software measurement and functional programming

Software metrics have been investigated for the assessment of programs writ-ten in a functional programming language. The external attribute of programs considered in this thesis is their comprehensibility to novice programmers. This attribute has been operationalized in a number of experiments. The in-ternal attribute of software which is examined is the structure. Two models for the structure of software have been employed: callgraphs and flowgraphs. The proposed control-flow model captures the operational semantics of function definitions. The objective measurement of the attributes has been supported by tools. The validation of structure metrics has been addressed in certain ex-periments for programming-in-the-small. The structure of type expressions in functional programs has been analysed in a case study. A simple framework for software metrication proved to be useful. The validation of metrics has been linked with axioms from the representational measurement theory. The control-flow model for functional programs showed its value in the set-up of an experiment regarding the influence of the structure on the comprehensibility. A programming style rule on the use of guards in function definitions has been validated by the findings in this experiment

Teaching functional programming to first-year students

In the period 1986-1991, experiments have been carried out with an introductory course in computer programming, based on functional programming. Due to thorough educational design and evaluation, a successful course has been developed. This has led to a revision of the computer programming education in the first year of the computer science curriculum at the University of Twente. This article describes the approach, the aim of the computer programming course, the outline and subject matter of the course and the evaluation. Educational research has been done to assess the quality of the course. Contents 1 Introduction 50 1.1 Motivation 50 1.2 The students 51 2 The computer programming course 51 2.1 Functional Programming 52 2.2 Imperative Programming 53 2.3 Programming techniques 53 2.4 Instructional material 54 3 Evaluations 55 3.1 Observations 55 3.2 Problems 56 3.3 Functional versus imperative programming 58 4 Programming project 60 4.1 Organisation 61 4.2 Railway information sys..

Using readability, comprehensibility and lexical coverage to evaluate the suitability of an introductory accountancy textbook to its readership

At universities, textbooks are still a primary source of course content. However, this can only be efficacious if the intended readers are able to comprehend the content of the textbooks adequately. This study investigated three possible approaches to determining whether the intended readership of a prescribed Introductory Accountancy textbook (Cornelius & Weyers 2011) will be able to make meaning of that textbook. Such an investigation has important implications for authors, publishers of textbooks and subject lecturers prescribing the texts. Readability of the textbook was determined by using the Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kinkaid Grade Level indices, as well as the average of five conveniently calculated grade level reading indices. A Cloze procedure test was administered to a selection of students to determine their reading comprehension of a reading text. Finally, Nations’ Vocabulary Size Test (Nation and Beglar 2007: 9, 11) was used to determine whether the vocabulary size of the selection of students provides adequate lexical coverage of the lexis used in the textbook to enable comprehension of the text. The findings were somewhat conflicting. The readability indices, and to a lesser extent the vocabulary size test, indicated suitability of the textbook to its intended readership. The Cloze test results suggested contradictory findings that users of the textbook will be reading at their frustration level. These conflicting findings are discussed.Keywords: readability, reading comprehension, vocabulary size, higher educatio

Consensus Democracy and Bureaucracy in the Low Countries

The politics and administration of institutional chang

Kombination von Messdaten und wissensbasierter Modellierung zur Fehlerdiagnose bei Weichen / Connecting measurement data and knowledge-based engineering for heavy rail switch fault diagnosis

Die Anwendung Künstlicher Intelligenz (KI) im Bereich Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) der Eisenbahninfrastruktur, insbesondere in der Fehlerdiagnose, wird durch hinsichtlich Umfang und/oder Labelling unzureichende Datenbestände und die Notwendigkeit der Rückverfolgbarkeit aufgrund strenger Sicherheitsvorschriften erschwert. Vielversprechende Ansätze sind Feature Engineering, unüberwachtes Lernen und wissensbasierte Systeme. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird nachfolgend erörtert, wie Stromumlaufkurven von Weichenantrieben ausgewertet und mit einem für den Menschen interpretierbaren Bayes'schen Netzmodell für Diagnosezwecke verbunden werden können. -- The application of AI methods in prognostics and health management, especially fault diagnosis, for railway infrastructure is complicated by the largely unlabelled databases and the necessity for traceability due to strict safety regulations. Promising approaches include feature engineering, unsupervised learning and knowledge-based systems. This article discusses how to treat the current curve measurements of railway point machines and connect them with a human-interpretable Bayesian network model for diagnostic purposes

Immunological Adaptations to Pregnancy in Women with Type 1 Diabetes

Despite adequate glycemic control, pregnancy outcome of women with type 1 diabetes (T1D) is still unfavorable as compared to healthy women. In a rat-model of T1D under normoglycemic conditions, adverse pregnancy outcome was also observed, which was associated with aberrant immunological adaptations to pregnancy. Because similar processes may occur in women with T1D we studied the systemic immune response in non-pregnant and pregnant women with and without T1D. The systemic immune response was assessed by using flow cytometry to evaluate the number and activational status of subpopulations of lymphocytes, Natural Killer cells and monocytes in peripheral blood of non-pregnant and pregnant women with and without T1D. An increased white blood cell count, an increased Th1/Th2 ratio, increased Natural Killer cell expression of CD335 and enhanced activation of intermediate and non-classical monocytes was observed in pregnant women with T1D vs. healthy pregnant women. Also, the pregnancy outcome (i.e. incidence of preterm delivery and macrosomia) of women with T1D was unfavorable as compared to healthy women. This study showed that in T1D, the immunological adaptations to pregnancy are disturbed. In addition to hyperglycemia, these different immunological adaptations may be responsible for the greater frequency of complications in pregnant women with T1D

Expert system based fault diagnosis for railway point machines

To meet the increasing demands for availability at reasonable cost, operators and maintainers of railway point machines are constantly looking for innovative techniques for switch condition monitoring and prediction. This includes automated fault root cause diagnosis based on measurement data (such as motor current curves) and other information. However, large, comprehensive sets of labeled data suitable for standard machine learning are not yet available. Existing data-driven approaches focus only on the differentiation of a few major fault categories at the level of the measurement data (i.e. the "fault symptoms"). There is great potential in hybrid models that use expert knowledge in combination with multiple sources of information to automatically identify failure causes at a much more detailed level. This paper discusses a Bayesian network diagnostic model for determining the root causes of faults in point machines, based on expert knowledge and few labeled data examples from the Netherlands. Human-interpretable current curve features and other information sources (e.g. past maintenance actions) are used as evidence. The result of the model is a ranking of the most likely failure causes with associated probabilities in terms of fuzzy multi-label classification, which is directly aimed at providing decision support to maintenance engineers. The validity and limitations of the model are demonstrated by a scenario-based evaluation and a brief analysis using information theoretic measures. We present the information sources used, the detailed development process and the analysis methodology. This article is intended to be a guide to developing similar models for various complex technical assets

An aggressive poorly differentiated plurihormonal Pit-1-positive adenoma

In July 2017, a 35-year-old woman was referred to our care for treatment of a large pituitary mass with an unusually high growth rate. She presented with right-sided ptosis and diplopia (n. III palsy), increasing retrobulbar pain and vertigo. Although laboratory investigations were consistent with acromegaly, she exhibited no clear phenotypic traits. During transsphenoidal surgery aimed at biopsy, typical adenomatous tissue was encountered, upon which it was decided to proceed to debulking. Histopathological analysis demonstrated a poorly differentiated plurihormonal Pit-1-positive adenoma with focal growth hormone (GH) and prolactin positivity, positive SSTR2 staining and a Ki-67 of 20–30%. Postoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examination revealed a large tumour remnant within the sella invading the right cavernous sinus with total encasement of the internal carotid artery and displacement of the right temporal lobe. As a consequence, she was treated additionally with radiotherapy, and a long-acting first-generation somatostatin analogue was prescribed. Subsequently, the patient developed secondary hypocortisolism and diabetes mellitus despite adequate suppression of GH levels. In September 2019, her symptoms recurred. Laboratory evaluations indicated a notable loss of biochemical control, and MRI revealed tumour progression. Lanreotide was switched to pasireotide, and successful removal of the tumour remnant and decompression of the right optic nerve was performed. She received adjuvant treatment with temozolomide resulting in excellent biochemical and radiological response after three and six courses. Symptoms of right-sided ptosis and diplopia remained. Evidence for systemic therapy in case of tumour progression after temozolomide is currently limited, although various potential targets can be identified in tumour tissue

Sleep habits and sleep disturbances in Dutch children: a population-based study

Abstract Sleep disorders can lead to significant morbidity. Information on sleep in healthy children is necessary to evaluate sleep disorders in clinical practice, but data from different societies cannot be simply generalized. The aims of this study were to (1) assess the prevalence of sleep disturbances in Dutch healthy children, (2) describe sleep habits and problems in this population, (3) collect Dutch norm data for future reference, and (4) compare sleep in children from different cultural backgrounds. A populationbased descriptive study was conducted using the Children's sleep habits questionnaire and the sleep self-report. One thousand five hundred seven proxy-reports and 262 selfreports were analyzed. Mean age was 8.5 years (95% confidence interval, 8.4-8.6), 52% were boys. Sleep problems in Dutch children were present in 25%, i.e., comparable to other populations. Sleep habits were age-related. Problem sleepers scored significantly higher on all scales. Correlations between parental and self-assessments were low to moderate. Dutch children had significantly more sleep disturbances than children from the USA and less than Chinese children. Cognitions and attitudes towards what is considered normal sleep seem to affect the appraisal of sleep, this probably accounts partly for cultural differences. For a better understanding of cultural influences on sleep, more information on these determinants and the establishment of cultural norms are mandatory

Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: a prospective study

The objective of this study is to determine if quality of care, symptoms of depression, disease characteristics and quality of life of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are related to requesting euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide (EAS) and dying due to EAS. Therefore, 102 ALS patients filled out structured questionnaires every 3months until death and the results were correlated with EAS. Thirty-one percent of the patients requested EAS, 69% of whom eventually died as a result of EAS (22% of all patients). Ten percent died during continuous deep sedation; only one of them had explicitly requested death to be hastened. Of the patients who requested EAS, 86% considered the health care to be good or excellent, 16% felt depressed, 45% experienced loss of dignity and 42% feared choking. These percentages do not differ from the number of patients who did not explicitly request EAS. The frequency of consultations of professional caregivers and availability of appliances was similar in both groups. Our findings do not support continuous deep sedation being used as a substitute for EAS. In this prospective study, no evidence was found for a relation between EAS and the quality and quantity of care received, quality of life and symptoms of depression in patients with ALS. Our study does not support the notion that unmet palliative care needs are related to EAS